CANDIDATE ROW – The five candidates for four slots on the Nov. 3 general election ballot made their backgrounds and positions clear at the Sept. 8 meeting of the Cotuit Santuit Civic Association. They are (l-r) Tanya Duff of Barnstable Village, Stephanie Ellis of Marstons Mills, Paula Fay of Cotuit, Jenn Sawyer of Marstons Mills and Margaret Weber of Centerville.

In the only public forum prior to Tuesday’s preliminary election, the five school committee candidates for four slots on the November ballot gave their backgrounds and reasons for seeking office.

Before an audience of about a dozen at Cotuit’s Freedom Hall, the candidates also fielded questions during the Cotuit-Santuit Civic Association-sponsored event.

Tanya Duff of Barnstable Village is an educator who is running to help make the schools better for her children and those of the town.

“Education is the best gift I can give my children,” Duff said. “I am an educator and see things from a teacher’s perspective in the classroom.”

Stephanie Ellis of Marstons Mills is a nurse at Cape Cod Hospital and is running because she has “three unbelievable children.

“I am someone who is not an educator,” Ellis said, explaining that coming at issues from a different perspective is something that she can bring to the committee “that it needs.”

Paula Fay of Cotuit said she brings a diverse background that includes 14 years in business, multiple roles on curriculum advisory panels for mathematics at the state and federal levels, and as a teacher in the classroom including the Barnstable public schools, among others.

“Like many people in retirement, I’m very busy,” Fay said, ticking off a lengthy list of current professional activities.

“I am not a parent,” Fay said, explaining that her focus would be “for all children, not just my children.”

Jenn Sawyer of Marstons Mills is a former buyer for the Christmas Tree Shops, which taught her the ins and outs of fiscal constraint, she said with a light laugh.

“I want to represent the mother’s voice for our town,” Sawyer said. She has two daughters in the Barnstable schools.

She was also excited that five women were up for two positions.

Margaret Weber, who goes by Margeaux, came to Barnstable in 1998 with her physician husband and started her family. Before that, she was an environmental law attorney involved in what she described as complex litigation. Before that she was an administrator for a nonprofit arts organization, “where you learn to get things done for no money.”

Describing the downsizing of the past year as a “painful process,” Weber said, “We need to continue to ask the questions and get answers many of us feel we didn’t get.”

Prompted by a question from a woman who felt poorly treated during the school committee’s contentious school reorganization and budget meeting, candidates expressed differing levels of dissatisfaction with how that process was handled.

The questioner explained that she saw some members of the committee as “tough, sarcastic bullies” and asked how the candidates would handle fellow members in such situations.

“It is upsetting because the people who actually have the courage to speak up” should net be made fun of, Duff said.

“It is my job, my responsibility, my duty to listen to what everyone has to say,” Ellis said.

“Decorum is very important in that situation,” Fay said. She then related an experience when she felt a current committee member was a poor representative for the district.

“I’m a great believer in the First Amendment,” Weber said. “I did feel people were cut off unfairly.”

Coming off an earlier comment regarding the need for an aligned curriculum at the elementary level, Janelle D’Aprix chairman of the Barnstable Community Horace Mann Charter Public School asked Fay her thought on charter schools in that regard.

Fay said that as a “sending district” to the merged upper grades, the curriculum at the charter schools has to have some relationship to the rest of the district. She saw that occurring partly naturally because “teachers do talk,” but also thought they needed to be working from the same set of standards and expectations.

The final question from Amy Kates of Cotuit asked the candidates what they’d do if they had a magic wand.

“I’d like a really big wand to change a lot of things,” Sawyer said, settling on taking the eighth grade out of the high school.

“I’d rethink spending down the savings account,” Weber said, getting a wave of acknowledgement from other candidates.

Tanya Duff would change class size, because kids have a lot of diverse needs, and “25 (in a class) is a lot.”

“I wish they were thinking forward five years ago,” Ellis said, again alluding to the spending of the cash reserves.

“I’d probably go back to that time when civility [was the order of the day],” Fay said.